The Cold Eye (The Devil's West #2)(89)

She blinked down into the cup, feeling the warmth slowly creep back into her flesh, aware that she was thinking foolishly, that Gabriel was right; better she sit and be still a while longer.

“Ma?tre Isobel.”

She looked up as the man approached. Old, balding, a shirt buttoned to his neck, neatly darned at the elbows . . . Judge Pike, she remembered. He’d met them at the gate, and then . . .

“No, don’t you stand,” he reassured her. “Marshal LaFlesche has already given her word; all I’ll be needing from you is why you say these men have brought false claim, and there’s no need to be formal about it with only us here. You being who you are, your word will be enough.”

Isobel blinked at him, then looked at the marshal standing a few paces behind. The older woman shook her head once: she hadn’t told the judge anything. But she’d said she was of Flood, and he’d mentioned the boss, not her. . . .

Isobel bit her lip. When she’d first left Flood, she’d thought the name alone would make people look up to her, give her some kind of power. Now, months of travel from home, that name elicited the respect she’d craved, and she didn’t trust it.

She wasn’t fool enough not to understand why. This far out, the boss wasn’t even a name; he was a figure, faceless and powerful. All they needed to know was she came from Flood, and she had authority. Her word would hang these men.

The Americans had given false witness, whether they’d understood that or not. Everyone in the Territory had to abide by the same rules. But she would give them fair telling.

She straightened her back and lifted her chin, putting the now-empty mug into Gabriel’s hand, as though she were making her evening report to the boss, telling him what she’d seen, what she’d observed of the players at the table, the loiterers along the bar.

“My mentor and I were riding north along the Road when I was called to witness.”

No need to say she’d been alone and asleep, or that the whisper hadn’t been a dream-call, not truly; explaining all that would take more strength than she had, with what she had yet to say.

And the whisper itself . . . Her thoughts of that, her dizzy, impossible thoughts, the sensation of something replacing herself with itself, she’d keep to herself. For now.

“We first encountered a homesteading, where the residents told us of the earth shaking, that there was a . . . something wrong, further north. That the ground shook and the animals fled.”

Had this been the boss, she would have told him of the sadness Jumping-Up Duck had described, had told him about the way they had seemed afraid of what was happening, the sorrow and anger they had described. But such things had no place, no weight in what this man must judge.

“Following their guidance, we rode further and came to a valley where . . .” She hesitated, suddenly wishing for the mug to be back in her hands, to give her something to hold on to, clench her fingers around. Instead, her fingers dug into her palms, feeling the cool lines of the sigil on her left, the warm, unmarked flesh on her right. “Some terrible medicine had been worked there,” she said finally. “A circle of power, a trap set . . . and death.”

So far, nothing she had said had made the judge react; she did not know if that meant her words matched the marshal’s or he simply had the ability to keep his thoughts from showing in his face or body.

There was no need to tell this man what the magicians had drawn back to half-life, or that the dead lingered as a haint, tainted with madness, bound within the earth for eternity. No need to speak of the torment they lingered in, that shook the valley with their pain. There was nothing his knowing could change, nothing his judgment could heal.

That was her burden to carry, not his.

“Magicians built that trap—and died in it,” she went on, and was gratified, selfishly, to be able to read the surprise in the way his eyes widened ever-so-slightly.

“A duel caused the quakes?”

Duels—one magician setting themselves against another—were not common, but they were not uncommon, either. They preyed on each other the way wolves preyed on deer, and woe to the soul caught up in their storm.

Isobel had survived such a storm, though as much through luck as wisdom. She knew firsthand what a magician could do, and what two magicians might do, if they took their battle outside a crossroad.

If you see a magician, run. It was advice meant to keep ordinary folk alive.

“Not a duel,” she said quietly. “They were not waging war against each other, but together.”

The judge spluttered before he regained his words. “You’re mad.”

“I wish I were,” she said. “But I speak truth. Five who died, and two that we know of who lived.”

Seven was strong medicine. Territory medicine. Seven calls from an owl meant someone would die. Gabriel had taught her that.

She thought of the owl she had seen, the one that had led them to the marshal, and something cold stroked her bones. There was nothing to say to her that it had not simply been a bird, disturbed from its slumber, hunting by day. These things happened. But Isobel had grown up in the devil’s house, and she knew better than to presume. The wapiti guarding the valley, the owl leading them to the magicians . . . spirit-animals with impossible, contradictory advice, and whatever had happened to her in those hills that left the lingering taste of smoke and silver on her tongue. If she could only remember.